Fed expected to raise economic forecasts, extend vow to keep rates low
The Federal Reserve is expected to wrap up its latest policy meeting on Wednesday with somewhat rosier economic forecasts but a renewed pledge to keep interest rates low for as long as the world's biggest economy needs to recover from its deepest downturn in decades.
The two-day meeting is the US central bank's first under a newly adopted framework that promises to shoot for inflation above 2 per cent to make up for periods, such as now, where it is running below that target. The strategy means the Fed will not take its foot off the monetary gas pedal even if unemployment continues to drop at a faster-than-expected pace.
Fed officials don't appear ready to translate that framework into an explicit promise to keep the central bank's key overnight lending rate in its current range of 0 per cent to 0.25 per cent until certain economic benchmarks - say, 2.5 per cent inflation - are met.
The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee is scheduled to release its policy statement and a summary of fresh economic projections at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT). Fed Chair Jerome Powell is due to hold a virtual news briefing half an hour later. "We expect the Committee to adopt this type of outcome-based forward guidance by the end of the year," Lewis Alexander, chief US economist at Nomura, wrote in a note ahead of this week's Fed meeting.
But the Fed is likely to close out this meeting with other signals for its long-term commitment to easy monetary policy, Alexander and other analysts said.
Those may include incorporating into the post-meeting policy statement the new "average" 2 per cent inflation target and fresh quarterly forecasts showing most if not all Fed policymakers see no need to raise interest rates through at least 2023.
The Fed may also lean into its bond-buying program as a means to support the US recovery from the recession triggered by the coronavirus epidemic rather than to just supply liquidity to fragile financial markets. Such a change would shore up expectations for a continued easy money policy without actually bolstering purchases.
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